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The chart on the cover shows life paths that zig-zag in opposite directions based on individual choices.

Early on I had asked Jesus to be my Savior in High School in 1970, but in subsequent years I fell away. My first marriage fell apart in 1978 because of besetting sins and self-focus. Jesus gently nudged me as many Christian friends from High School stayed true to Jesus. In 1982 a doctor acquaintance testified Jesus had brought her back from brain death.

Next God pursued me with a second chance at marriage in 1982 even when I was furthest away from Him. But I failed to thank Him and continued on my sinful, self-focused path toward poor choices and marital instability.

God lovingly pursued me with protection when, in my folly, I rolled a car down a hillside and sustained a fractured neck vertebrae, but miraculously, no paralysis nor spinal cord problem. A few years later a random painter leaned from his ladder and enthusiastically told me about his joy in being right with God through Christ. Next a student invited me to his church. I still refused all of God’s pursuits.

By this time, my inward struggles were compounding. I was not aware that sin causes confusion. My academic studies were not going well. Would God continue to let me know that His grip of pursuit on me was firm and that He would not let go?

In the Bible Jesus tells the disciples He would pursue them: “I am going there [to heaven] to prepare a place for you … I will come back and take you to be with Me that you may also be where I am” (John 14:1-3). To the leper who said to Jesus, “Lord, if you are willing, You can make me clean,” Jesus reached out His hand and touched the man. “‘I am willing,’ He said. ‘Be clean!’ Immediately he was cured of his leprosy” (Matthew 8:2-3). Jesus crossed a lake to pursue deliverance of the demon-possessed man who lived among the tombs. When Peter denied and ditched Jesus, Jesus came after him and fixed him a breakfast while commissioning him to lead the disciples onward.

About 8 years after I had abandoned my faith, I attended a wedding reception in 1984 where I observed several of my Christian High School friends shining their solid Christian character and Christ-centered marriage vows. I wanted what they had. A pastor was there who gently persuaded my wife and I to attend the same church my student had mentioned a few months prior. We attended. This led to a turnabout and slow changes replacing my self-focusing sin patterns with Christ-focused patterns.

That was 36 years ago. Jesus continues to validate our turn toward Him by many evidences of His stability in our marriage and family as we pray for Jesus to continue to be our core sin-removing strength, to lovingly pursue our four children, their spouses and our grandchildren with His pursuit of amazing grace stability. We want them to finish strongly dependent on Christ in their own personal one-on-one and marriage-based faith.

I now heed the warnings that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23), and that “the wages [penalty] of sin is death [dying in your sins forever separated from God]” (Romans 6:23a), as my faithful believing Christian High School classmates have unwaveringly heeded.

Like them, I have come to absolutely believe the good news that “the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23b), and believe that Jesus is the only “way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me [Jesus]” (John 14:6). As millions have done through the ages, I’m “all in” on the gift of Jesus to save me. “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Romans 10:13). No self-saving good works nonsense here. I deserve hell and will go there unless Jesus saves me.

Wherever you find yourself on the front of this pamphlet’s colored path chart, dear reader, Jesus is pursuing you to be absolutely confident of His gift of forgiveness of all your sins on the cross, if only you turn to Him. Please admit your self-seeking sin nature out loud to God and ask His help to turn from it by asking Jesus to take your sins away and to come into your life, believing in your heart that Jesus died for your sins and was raised by God from the dead. “If you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9).

Then read your Bible daily, pray, meet with people of like Christian faith and tell others about how Jesus relentlessly pursues your heart with the stability only He can offer for your life and your eternal future. Thank you.

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